BUSH Live at the Neptune Theater, Seattle, WA, 9/15/11

2011 seems to be the year for 90’s reunions and nostalgia. 20th anniversaries all around, whether it is Nirvana’s Nevermind, Lollapalooza, or Reel Big Fish. Great bands have made great comebacks: Red Hot Chili Peppers, Blink-182, Soundgarden, and British post-grunge superstars Bush. Bush broke up in 2002 due to declining record sales and lack of support from their label, but they reformed last year and returned this year with their ballad heavy The Sea of Memories.

Being the youngest person alive who actually knows who Bush is, I was excited to see them at the Neptune Theater, the newest venue in Seattle. It used to be a movie theater, but was bought by STG (who also own the Paramount and Moore Theaters) and turned into a music venue. The Neptune Theater has some great things about it. It’s small, it’s intimate, it’s beautifully decorated (like the Roman God, not like the planet), and you don’t have to wait for the doors to open to actually go inside.

There wasn’t much to do except wait, so while my parents were up in the balcony, I stayed down and waited for the opening act, Dead Sara, to come on. I had never heard of them, and I don’t think anyone else has. They came on stage at exactly 8:00 PM, looking horribly nervous. The singer paced the stage back and forth as the rest of her band set up. Dead Sara were loud, energetic, and very melodic. It was kind of like Taylor Swift meets Florence and the Machine meets The Joy Formidable. I know those are all chick-based bands, but you get the point. The bass boomed and blapped as the bassist fiddled with his distortion and wah pedals. It was almost Les Claypool-esque. Dead Sara did not have a lot of room to move, but they made the best of it, and they certainly kept me entertained. They left the stage at 8:30 and we waited once again to get our daily dosage of Gavin and the Gang.

About 45 minutes later, after numerous false applauses, the British four pieced came on stage and were ready to rock. They opened their set with the first song off of The Sea of Memories, “The Mirror of the Signs.” The crowd didn’t seem that into it, but that’s ok. It wasn’t until song #2, old gem “Little Things”, that the crowd actually went nuts. And I mean that, halfway through “Little Things”, a fight broke out. There was moshing, struggling, fighting, and people being tools. It was rough and I got scratched up, but I survived.

Next they jumped into another new song, power ballad “I Believe In You.” Gavin Rossdale sang even better than I imagined he could, and even if they played songs I didn’t know, they played amazingly. They set featured a lot of new songs like “The Sound of Winter”, “All My Life”, “Afterlife”, and “All Night Doctors.” But they played mostly old stuff, like “Greedy Fly”, “Everything Zen” (with a snippet of Talking Heads’ “Burning Down the House”), “The Chemicals Between Us”, “The People That We Love”, “Swallowed”, and “Machinehead.” After their first set ended, and some chanting of “WE WANT BUSH,” the four-piece came back on for a four-song encore, consisting of “Alien”, an awesomely Soundgarden-y version of The Beatles “Come Together”, and their biggest hits in a back-to-back slushie of nineties goodness. The band left the stage so Gavin could play “Glycerine” alone, and they came back on to change that second-gear song into a fifth-gear song by rocking out the last verse. Then they played “Comedown” with a crowd sing-a-long, but then, sadly, Bush’s concert was over.

Bush blew away all expectations, and it was great to see these guys. I am happy about the choice of venue, and had a great time, despite having to go to school the next morning.

And when Gavin Rossdale took his pony tail out, he bore a striking resemblance to Survivor’s Coach.

My name is Jakob and I listen to a lot of music. I also attend lots of concerts. That is all.